Samurai and Ninja in Second Edition

[Unicore]

I think there is a misconception that casters can’t use weapons at all. A wizard with a rogue dedication can pretty much do the sneaky caster just fine, and still make the occasional powerful singular weapon attack. Then you have the rogue with a caster dedication that can do pretty much all the utility stuff with scrolls supplementing limited slots, then you have the red mantis assassin archetype, the shadow dancer archetype, the butterfly blade archetype and the laughing shadow magus to help fulfill an entire spectrum of martial to skill/spy to caster assassin fantasies. None of them are exactly a Japanese ninja, but they do represent a pretty broad version of how that fits in Golarion.

I played a goblin cleric of Ketephys with a focus on the darkness domain that mc’d into shadow dancer and was very much a magical ninja m-like character that used a bow and greater darkness to great effect, for another outlier example of how pervasive and easy combining stealth and magic and weapons can be in PF2.

[Ryangwy]

Unicore wrote:

I think there is a misconception that casters can’t use weapons at all.

It's not a misconception - it's a statement on the needs of a folklore ninja, which none of the existing options you mention capture on their balance of specific kinds of magic, weapon use and trickery because, well, it's a niche that is very authentically Japanese and everything you've mentioned are all very Western takes on the concept.

Sure, you can cast invisibility on a rogue. The 3.5e ninja is exactly that class, even. It's also not the folklore ninja, and I feel like PF2e should make a better try of capturing the authentic culture - one that's actually fairly tight knit, because it all came out at the tail end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century - than just saying 'but you can cast magic, stealth and use shurikens, why aren't you happy?'

Paizo can also just not do a ninja, of course, that's their right. But morso than the samurai, the ninja is a bunch of puzzle pieces that don't cohere well (admittedly, we're also missing e.g. the Chinese strategist ala Kongming who controls the weather and constructs formations of the eight elements to coordinate armies, for another example of an Eastern popular character archetype on melding natural magic and warfare that the Western sphere doesn't grok at all)

The difference betwen the ninja/strategist and a rogue/commander witha druid archetype is that the ninja/strategist controls nature to sneak/command, while the archetyped options controls nature and also sneak/command, but they're separate buckets that occasionally synergises. The understanding is very different. It's Eastern philosophy that even the five-element monk is tepidly skimming over because it isn't very prevalant in the West

[Crouza]

Ryangwy wrote:

I'm fairly certain the iconic Japanese sword user that does those things use a greatsword... I do agree that a lot of people have attached things to samurai that don't even match how they're 'properly' used, as a catch-all for 'sword thing in East Asia' (extra funny when the katana, like the longsword for knights, wasn't even their main weapon).

Roronoa Zoro comes to mind.

[Crouza]

Ryangwy wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I think there is a misconception that casters can’t use weapons at all.

It's not a misconception - it's a statement on the needs of a folklore ninja, which none of the existing options you mention capture on their balance of specific kinds of magic, weapon use and trickery because, well, it's a niche that is very authentically Japanese and everything you've mentioned are all very Western takes on the concept.

Sure, you can cast invisibility on a rogue. The 3.5e ninja is exactly that class, even. It's also not the folklore ninja, and I feel like PF2e should make a better try of capturing the authentic culture - one that's actually fairly tight knit, because it all came out at the tail end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century - than just saying 'but you can cast magic, stealth and use shurikens, why aren't you happy?'

Paizo can also just not do a ninja, of course, that's their right. But morso than the samurai, the ninja is a bunch of puzzle pieces that don't cohere well (admittedly, we're also missing e.g. the Chinese strategist ala Kongming who controls the weather and constructs formations of the eight elements to coordinate armies, for another example of an Eastern popular character archetype on melding natural magic and warfare that the Western sphere doesn't grok at all)

The difference betwen the ninja/strategist and a rogue/commander witha druid archetype is that the ninja/strategist controls nature to sneak/command, while the archetyped options controls nature and also sneak/command, but they're separate buckets that occasionally synergises. The understanding is very different. It's Eastern philosophy that even the five-element monk is tepidly skimming over because it isn't very prevalant in the West

Which ninja are you trying to be though when you talk about "folklore ninja"? Do you mean like Jiraiya with his affinity for toads and very high magic arts? Do you mean the version of Ninja's from the Iga Clan whose techniques were mostly misdirection, acting, and information gathering with a slant towards religious zealotry? Do you mean like legendary figures like Hattori Hanzo, who was primarily a samurai who used information gathering to help the Tokugawa?

Again, to reiterate what has been covered in this thread already. Everyone has a different bespoke idea of ninja in their head. And just going "Well make the one from folklore" doesn't help with even the original sources and folklore contradict one another and expectations. Hell, one ninja named Sugitani Zenjūbō was famous for camping in a tree for 3 days with a rifle and trying to shoot Oda Nobunaga dead. Does this mean we need ninjas to be skilled in firearms and get bespoke firearm feats as well? Or should we just use existing classes and archetypes to fullfill that fantasy instead, as has been suggested already?

[Unicore]

Ryangwy wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I think there is a misconception that casters can’t use weapons at all.

It's not a misconception - it's a statement on the needs of a folklore ninja, which none of the existing options you mention capture on their balance of specific kinds of magic, weapon use and trickery because, well, it's a niche that is very authentically Japanese and everything you've mentioned are all very Western takes on the concept.

Sure, you can cast invisibility on a rogue. The 3.5e ninja is exactly that class, even. It's also not the folklore ninja, and I feel like PF2e should make a better try of capturing the authentic culture - one that's actually fairly tight knit, because it all came out at the tail end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century - than just saying 'but you can cast magic, stealth and use shurikens, why aren't you happy?'

Paizo can also just not do a ninja, of course, that's their right. But morso than the samurai, the ninja is a bunch of puzzle pieces that don't cohere well (admittedly, we're also missing e.g. the Chinese strategist ala Kongming who controls the weather and constructs formations of the eight elements to coordinate armies, for another example of an Eastern popular character archetype on melding natural magic and warfare that the Western sphere doesn't grok at all)

The difference betwen the ninja/strategist and a rogue/commander witha druid archetype is that the ninja/strategist controls nature to sneak/command, while the archetyped options controls nature and also sneak/command, but they're separate buckets that occasionally synergises. The understanding is very different. It's Eastern philosophy that even the five-element monk is tepidly skimming over because it isn't very prevalant in the West

I have an academic interest in Eastern philosophies, but especially Chinese philosophies and religions and the broader spread of Buddhism from East to West Asia. I think it is pretty important to remember that PF2 actually does a really bad job (which is a really good thing) at representing a lot of Western philosophies, especially those that push into religious faiths and world views. Divinity as represented in PF2 (and D&D) has been called sacrilegious by many and the closer it would try to represent one particular religious world view, the more problematic the game would become for even more people, even if much of the fiction that inspires players of the game gets away with exploring those ideas and beliefs more closely than a game itself can.

I think this is important to point out because very few classes represent the deeper philosophy of the real world inspirations for those classes, and this is a strength of the system that needs to be preserved.

I think it is important then to focus on what mechanics the characters need in order for the players and GMs to flavor their stories for themselves without being bound to overly restrictive class narratives that prevent players from using them imaginatively.

I forgot to mention previously that the animist and even the oracle also work pretty well to mechanically provide unique ways of combining stealth, magic and weapon use in ways that are pretty interesting and unique too. Like I think that Kongming is a larger than life character that pushes much closer to a super mythic Old Man Jatembe, that is going to be able to do more than any player character is going to be able to do short of the highest levels of the game, so we are probably looking at combining mythic destinies and features that would probably be fairly underwhelming in play because the magical powers don't need to be able to kill demon lords or the greatest dragons in the land by themselves, but would level armies of lower level human soldiers. So an animist or druid would be able to harness the power of nature or nature spirits to be sneaky and to possibly command armies. I think some of the optional variant rules in the Dark Archive might also help give mechanical form to some of the ideas I see people putting forward in this thread.

[Dunwright]

SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:

Makes complete sense to me to call the "monk" something else, it being a very inaccurate name to all but a few real world monastic orders/traditions. Other d20 fantasy games have already tried this, with Level Up Advanced 5e being the first that comes to mind with "Adept".

I don't think it necessarily needs to be renamed. While the monk clearly has its origins in martial arts movies and mostly-fictional shaolin fantasies, it's also something that's becomes established as an RPG archetype in its right, both in various TTRPGs (like the one we're talking about and its ancestor) and also video game RPGs (Warcraft, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile, about a million others). Which is not unlike the druid, or cleric, or paladin, or several other classes. Of course you still could rename it, like happened with paladin -> champion, and it might be a good idea of you intend to totally rework the class fantasy. But if it the basic concept is still going to be a semi-mystical martial arts master with a focus on unarmed combat, I think monk is fine and probably preferable, because in context it probably evokes moreso the typical RPG concept of a monk class than it does kung fu movies, especially nowadays.

[Ryangwy]

Unicore wrote:

I think it is pretty important to remember that PF2 actually does a really bad job (which is a really good thing) at representing a lot of Western philosophies, especially those that push into religious faiths and world views. Divinity as represented in PF2 (and D&D) has been called sacrilegious by many and the closer it would try to represent one particular religious world view, the more problematic the game would become for even more people, even if much of the fiction that inspires players of the game gets away with exploring those ideas and beliefs more closely than a game itself can.

Oh, I definitely agree. It's been said before that on matters of magic, D&D is bad at describing anything except itself, and divine magic is one such core pillar of D&D magic. The most flavourful magic classes in PF2e are the ones most distant from D&D and also the ones who take the biggest sledgehammer to slot casting (animist, psychic, etc.)

Still, though, it's undeniable D&D uses Western fantasy as a baseline (and also became sort of a baseline for Western fantasy) and so just flat out doesn't have support for things common in Eastern fantasy. Inasmuch as D&D has ninjas, they (and monks) are drawn from Western superhero comics. Or the hilarious but real subcategory of Japanese Western Fantasy which includes Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Unicore wrote:

Like I think that Kongming is a larger than life character that pushes much closer to a super mythic Old Man Jatembe, that is going to be able to do more than any player character is going to be able to do short of the highest levels of the game, so we are probably looking at combining mythic destinies and features that would probably be fairly underwhelming in play because the magical powers don't need to be able to kill demon lords or the greatest dragons in the land by themselves, but would level armies of lower level human soldiers.

I'm using Kongming as a touchpoint but this is what I mean by the fan-wielding strategist being a very common Eastern fantasy character that just... never appears in Western sources or the kind of Eastern fiction that gets spread widely in the West. The animist is a specific kind of Eastern character too, because they're based on animism (duh) which is, of course, different from being a strategist. Baby Zhuge doesn't need to shape the land or slay demon lords but turning an area of ground into mud and commanding an ally to Shove an enemy into the mud is definitely within scope of PF2e early levels.

Which, again, I'm aware that it'll likely never be made because the proportion of Paizo customers who are even aware this is A Thing is miniscule! It's just there as a supporting argument as to why it's simultaneously true that what I call the folklore ninja is both very popular and widespread in Eastern media and also very different from what TTRPGs will accommodate. The fact you're not aware this is a whole trope despite your knowledge of Eastern philosophy is kinda the proof of that.

Crouza wrote:

Which ninja are you trying to be though when you talk about "folklore ninja"? Do you mean like Jiraiya with his affinity for toads and very high magic arts? Do you mean the version of Ninja's from the Iga Clan whose techniques were mostly misdirection, acting, and information gathering with a slant towards religious zealotry? Do you mean like legendary figures like Hattori Hanzo, who was primarily a samurai who used information gathering to help the Tokugawa?

I picked the term to mean stuff like Jiraya, yes. Though I should note while the 'historical' Iga clan (there's a lot of postfactual myth-making about the Sengoku) obviously don't use magic, the Sanada Ten Braves version do and that's part of the folklore I'm talking about. It might be better to call them 'manga ninjas' or 'Naruto ninjas' to avoid confusion with other kinds of historical folklore but a lot of people seem to think Naruto is deviant from standard ninjas when it's actually very standard and I want to avoid that too.

It's in the same way the Paladins of Chalamange are also real people with real, non-magical deeds but the paladin (now Champion) class is about the story version that ride hippogryffs, heal with a touch and fight without dying for days due to divine intervention.

[Teridax]

Dunwright wrote:

While the monk clearly has its origins in martial arts movies and mostly-fictional shaolin fantasies, it's also something that's becomes established as an RPG archetype in its right, both in various TTRPGs (like the one we're talking about and its ancestor) and also video game RPGs (Warcraft, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile, about a million others). Which is not unlike the druid, or cleric, or paladin, or several other classes.

I would be careful to avoid relying too much on other RPGs as a cultural model rather than primary sources, because a huge number of those RPGs share the same DNA. Warcraft and Diablo's classes in particular are heavily based off of D&D, and many other RPGs that have followed have either taken inspiration from D&D as well or Blizzard's own games. Using D&D-descended games to justify tropes in another D&D-descended game comes across to me as a case of the serpent eating its own tail.

As for the mechanics being discussed around ninja and samurai, I've started drafting two separate brews just recently, one to update the Eldritch Trickster and the other to provide a grab bag of iaido-themed and switch-hitting character options. The general aim here is to try to provide specific options players are looking for when trying to emulate a specific ninja- or samurai-themed character, while keeping those options thematically broad enough that they can conceivably work with a larger array of concepts. Assuming these options satisfy (which isn't necessarily the case, just for the sake of the argument here), what would still need to be covered?

[Kavlor]

In my personal opinion, I see absolutely nothing wrong with having a thematic Ninja or Samurai class. First of all, we already have the Viking, as well as several other examples of strictly culturally-oriented content. Secondly—if you dislike the abundance of specifically Japanese elements (and I myself agree that Tian Xia draws its inspiration primarily from Japan)—the solution isn't to reject potential content entirely; rather, you should advocate for adding more "flavor" drawn from other real-world cultures. It’s not as if there aren't plenty to choose from.

The main challenge regarding the mechanical implementation of the Samurai and Ninja lies, instead, in the need to thematically define what the very concepts of the Samurai and Ninja represent within the context of Pathfinder. I do not believe they necessarily need to be full-fledged classes; however, they could certainly be realized as thematic archetypes—packages of abilities drawn from various existing classes—for those players who wish to engage with these specific tropes.

[The Raven Black]

keftiu wrote:

If more of the Ninja fans were also clamoring for the game to get a Maharlika class alongside it, I might be more sympathetic.

Just clamoring for Shinobi might even be enough for me.

Come to think of it, I would like a "ninja" who excels at attracting attention to themselves while the real killers do the actual work.